Monday, 15 October 2012

Bacon Pasta

On Tuesdays I eat dinner at work. This is for various reasons which I am sure I will come to in another post one day (Big Tuesday = a real day of the week to be proud of.) I struggle to find things to eat and most of the time I just end up having leftovers, but today I didn't make enough food to have leftovers tomorrow so I cooked something especially.'Bacon pasta' is an old family recipe except not really. Basically when I was a child my favourite dinner was bacon pasta, but it's not quite the same as I mainly loved it as it had about 1kg of cheese per portion (I stress again, I honestly wasn't even a fat child). Basically what I am trying to say is that there is no source for this recipe as it's so simple that a monkey could invent it if set free in the aisles of any given Costcutter. I hope you didn't come to this blog expecting brilliance.Bacon Pasta

Laziness rating: Well you have to chop a few bits up and put the stove on, but it is really dead easy if you've ever prepared food in your life, or probably even if you've ever eaten it. So you'll be fine.Time: About 15 minutes inc. chopping.

Ingredients (To make 1 serving - just double/triple/quadruple as necessary)1. However much pasta you want. I had 70g and it looked like this before I cooked it:

In hindsight 60g would probably have been enough, but I was trying to take into account the fact I will be hungry when I eat it. As a general rule pasta portion-wise I will have 70g for a veg sauce, 60g for a meat sauce and 50g for a pasta salad. I had 20g of pasta once as part of a salad and found it so depressing I almost cried into it. Well not literally, but it was a bloody depressing salad. I LOVE PASTA.

2. 3 bacon medallions.3. Half of a pepper.4. About 6 or 7 cherry tomatoes.5. A clove of garlic. 6. About 4 or 5 chestnut mushrooms (or mushroom of your choice, whatever. God writing ingredient lists are boring, how does Nigella cope?)7. Halfish a carton of passata, roughly 250ml. I don't measure things out that are zero points, but it was roughly half a carton.8. Dried basil.Method:1. Chop everything up. Mine looked like this afterwards:

If I had an onion I'd have added half of it, for future reference, and add whatever other veg you like if you want. But the contents of my fridge will have to do.2. MEANWHILE.... boil some water and put your pasta in it and cook it for the recommended time. (Instruction included in case you are a monkey)3. Cook the bacon medallions in some Frylight on a medium high heat for about 5 minutes ish. You can move onto the next step when you feel vaguely confident that if you ate it you wouldn't get food poisoning, although it doesn't have to be strictly 'ready' yet. 4. Add your veg and cook for about another 3-4 minutes.

5. Add the half a carton of passata and cook through for about 2-3 minutes to warm it up, don't let it boil though. I don't know what would happen if you did let it boil but I've seen on cooking programs that you shouldn't really.

It might look like a bit much passata but then put in less if you want. I don't control you. Add a little bit of dried basil. If I was cooking this for my boyfriend I'd have added a few chilli flakes but it was just for me and I couldn't be bothered to find them in the cupboard so there you go.

6. The pasta should be done right about now, drain it and then mix it all up in the sauce.

7. Done! Serve, or in my case put it in a lunchbox ready to heat up in the microwave tomorrow.

Total Weight Watchers Pro Points: 2PP for sauce + however much pasta you want with it.

So, for 9PP I have that whole massive portion of food, and it is really nice and bacony, honest. Looking forward to it already.

This dinner would be great for: If you don't have much ingredients around and can't be bothered to go shopping, if you don't have much time or are too tired to cook a proper dinner, if you are really hungry, if you love bacon, if you crave carbs, if you are cooking dinner for a date but are playing hard to get.

This dinner wouldn't be so great for: If you're trying to impress someone with your culinary genius.

To make the dinner better for points: As I said, I probably didn't need quite as much pasta and could have cut a point and made it 8PP. Alternatively, if you're a vegetarian or are really cutting back, just leave out the bacon and add a few extra veg instead. Without the bacon the sauce is zero points. I would however never do this as I love bacon.

To make the dinner more exciting: Add 20g of reduced fat cheddar grated cheese for 1PP, or better yet 40g for 2PP. God I love cheese.